Please help! I am pretty "newb" to linux and have no idea what to do.
I got the message "your system must reboot to complete updates" (or similar). After rebooting I am greeted with a giant login screen and my 2nd monitor isn't showing anymore.

After logging in, I can only see a part of my desktop -- one giant folder icon.
I can right click on the desktop but gives me no option to change resolution or anything.

Any help would be wonderful.

PS: I am able to get a terminal window open. Luckily that ONE folder had a terminal shortcut I had put there. So if this can help troubleshoot, please advise.

EDIT 2: This got me back to Unity working and a nice resolution and both monitors:

apt-get purge nvidia-current
rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
reboot now

Unfortunately, now I guess I don't have any HW accel for my graphics card? :(

Do you have a laptop? Does it have nvidia optimus?
–
Vítor ManfrediniDec 3 '12 at 20:27

No, it is a desktop. It is ASUS nVidia EN9600GT graphics card.
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aikeruDec 3 '12 at 20:28

Do you have access to the screenshot utility? If not you can invoke it from the terminal with gnome-screenshot. It would be useful to see what your desktop looks like.
–
Chris WilsonDec 3 '12 at 21:17

Not much to see. Basically if you zoomed in on the desktop background and had one giant-size folder icon. Pretty sure it was in 640x480 resolution. Unity wouldn't come up and compiz would crash.
–
aikeruDec 3 '12 at 21:24

I think that's everything. I didn't think of this, but had I not had the shortcut on my desktop to get to terminal, I could have just rebooted into recovery mode to get the terminal and while googling found a hotkey to get there too (CTRL + ALT + F1?).

After this everything seems to be working. I used sudo nvidia-settings from terminal to rearrange the physical location of my monitors properly.